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These Rio Olympics are bending, not breaking: Arthur

There have been a pile of little things, and the main takeaway, just five days in, is this: It is so very hard to break an Olympics.

Shattered glass lies on the seats of a media bus after an incident Tuesday in Rio. Security says it was the result of a rock, while some on the bus are adamant it was the result of a shooting. Just another day at these Rio Games. (David Davies / The Associated Press)

RIO DE JANEIRO—So, about the bus. No, not the bus that was late, or the bus that got lost, or the bus that . . . look, it’s not about those buses. We’re talking about the Olympic bus that, while carrying media back from the women’s basketball venue at Deodoro in the north end of Rio de Janeiro, got hit. Two windows shattered, there were minor injuries and major panic.

There appears to be a disagreement over what hit it: bullets or stones? Yes, these are the 2016 Olympic Games.

“First of all, it was a stone, it was a rock,” said Rio 2016 security chief Luiz Fernando Correa, who is clearly a very serious man, even while wearing the festive yellow-orange-green jacket of the Games. He promised increased patrols, more military, protection. “We’re talking about an urban area, densely populated. It would be humanly impossible to have a perimeter that would exclude a person in the range of throwing something. We think it’s an act of vandalism and not a criminal act with the intention of injuring one person or another.”

Rio has already deployed 85,000 soldiers to protect these Games, twice that of London 2012. The bus was apparently pulled over, then escorted by police back to the Main Press Centre. The spot where the incident happened is on a partially walled highway. Rio is a city with access to both guns and stones. The Rio police say it was stones. No problem.

Some reporters on the bus say otherwise. Meet Lee Michaelson, who says she is a retired Air Force captain and former assistant U.S. attorney, who was on the bus. She writes about women’s basketball for Hoopfeed.com now. She is skeptical.

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“Come on, now. Two points of impact, pop-pop, that quickly, at a bus moving 45-50 miles an hour or better on the highway, to hit it exactly shoulder-to-head level, in the windows?” said Michaelson. “They should add that to the Olympic Games.

“Having been around guns all my life, having been in the military, having served as a federal prosecutor, doing firearms cases, I’m not an expert firearm analyst, but I sure as hell know what the sound of a gun is . . . my father had a word for it, I’m not sure you want me to repeat it on air, he used to call this sort of thing Happy Horseshit.”

So, small-arms fire, clearly bullets? “Clearly bullets.”

Michaelson said there was a photographer on the bus who had worked in Iraq, and he had the same reaction: Get down, hit the floor, get us out of here.

(I know nobody wants to hear about media complaints, and I have three points on this: 1. At an Olympics, it’s not just the media on buses and at venues and eating food. It’s everyone. It’s part of making an Olympics function. It’s the gig. 2. Have you SEEN the state of the media business lately? You’d complain, too. 3. Complaining about maybe being shot at seems reasonable to me, but then, I’m in the media.)

As any geologist or gangster can tell you, there is a big difference between bullets and stones. When I was a kid I threw snowballs at cars, once, for no good reason. When Kevin Clark, then of the Wall Street Journal, turned into San Francisco’s notorious Tenderloin neighbourhood during a Super Bowl jog, a glass bottle was hurled at his head. In a city of staggering inequality, where billions were being spent on a global sports festival, I’d probably throw stones at a bus too.

But if it was bullets: well, Rio has its problems. Parts of this city don’t feel dangerous at all — Copacabana, for instance, is a neighbourhood, full of street traffic, restaurants, bars. A lot of it is fun.

There have been a pile of little things, and the main takeaway, just five days in, is this: It is so very hard to break an Olympics. This thing is groaning a little, yes. There have been numerous thefts, including a $100,000 (U.S.) camera from the heavily secured stadium after the opening ceremony. There are empty seats, green pools, metal detector attendants spotted sleeping on the job, buses that don’t always work. There are bullets found at the equestrian venue, and the attempted robbery of the opening ceremony security chief, and . . . well, lots of things. And on Wednesday night, some journalists received an army jeep escort for about 10 kilometres on their media bus returning from Deodoro.

But it is lumbering forth, because it’s so big it would take something seismic to shake it. And all you really need is basic security, getting the athletes to the venues, and TV cameras. That will be enough.

And security, above all. Before these Games spokesman Mario Andrada said Rio would be the safest city in the world during the Olympics. Whether they were stones or bullets sent towards that bus — the media can be a little squirrelly, at times — he was asked if he regretted it.

“I don’t regret saying that,” said Andrada. “That’s the goal, that’s our mission, our mission is to make Rio the safest city in the world. When an athlete goes to competition he says he’s going to win, and if he doesn’t win he doesn’t regret saying that. Because that is something that provides the team that is working for him, and in some case for him, the necessary energy for not dropping the ball. If we drop the ball in security we need to get our act together. And we need to keep an eye on the mission that we have, which is to make Rio the safest city in the world during the Games.”

Aside from the athletes losing left and right, despite every intention to win, it was a comforting thing to say.

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